Late Friday afternoon, October 27th, CNN reported that a federal grand jury in Washington, DC approved the first criminal charges in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation meaning that someone is expected to be arrested and taken into custody as early as Monday, October 30th. Great read by Garrett M. Graff of WIRED as to how to interpret Mueller’s new charges.

From the story: “Expect to see garden-variety white-collar crimes—charges like money laundering, mail fraud, wire fraud, and “structuring,” (arranging financial transactions to avoid federal reporting requirements)—as well as the possibility of some more exotic charges like violating the nation’s election laws or the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or there’s a general catch-all known as 18 USC Sec. 371, “conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States.”

“The approach, then and now, has been almost always been similar: Work on peripheral figures first, encourage them to cooperate with the government against their bosses in exchange for a lighter sentence, and then repeat the process until the circle has closed tightly around the godfather or criminal mastermind.”

Speculation is rife as Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager/advisor, Jeffrey Yohai, Manafort’s estranged son-in-law, Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn (ret.), Trump’s former National Security Adviser and his son, Michael G. Flynn, a former Trump transition team staff member are bookie favorites.

Upon hearing the impending arrest on Friday evening, Roger Stone , a controversial advisor and staunch defender of U.S. President Trump, launched into a threatening and abusive tirade against CNN anchors and contributors resulting in a permanent suspension on Twitter.

Trump made no reference to Stone but in a flurry of Tweets on Sunday, October 29th, made allegations against former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Democrats re: e-mails, dossier, uranium, and Comey with an emphatic request demanding Republicans to “DO SOMETHING!”

25 days and counting – that’s how many legislative days are left between now and the end of the year and there’s a lot to get accomplished including budgets, taxes, healthcare and cyber security.

According to POLITICO, as of this week, the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to get documents from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for its probe into Russian election interference while the House Intelligence Committee is getting access via the FBI to the much ballyhooed Trump pee tapes dossier for its own Russian investigation.

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Catalonia latest: To bring you up to speed, the parliament of Catalonia, a semi-autonomous (and wealthy) region of Spain, voted to declare independence. The Spanish government said, “no bueno” and dissolved the regional government to the chagrin of the deposed Catalan president, Carles Puigdmemont. On Sunday, October 29th, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Barcelona to call for Spanish unity.

Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy has called for regional elections on December 21st.

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On a historical note, on this day in 1974, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman stepped into the ring and the history books for the legendary “Rumble in the Jungle” fight in Kinshasa, Zaire. Ali won the heavyweight championship after knocking out Foreman in the 8th round; and finally, in 1905, Russian Tsar Nicholas II, in an attempt to stave off a revolt, issued the October Manifesto , which laid the groundwork for the protection of civil rights, the creation of a constitution, and establishment of a parliament called the Duma.

A look at some of the stories trending this weekend, October 27-30Catalonia announced their independence from Spain resulting in the dismissal of the region’s parliament in what is billed as Spain’s largest political crisis post Franco era. According to Reuters, several European countries, including France and Germany, and the United States also rejected the independence declaration and said they supported Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s efforts to preserve Spain’s unity. A new election will be held in Catalonia on Dec. 21.

For all of the hand-wringing in the West about big data and privacy, a fascinating read in WIRED as to how the Chinese government plans to launch its mandatory Social Credit System in 2020, which is currently voluntary. Good scores offer perks including a fast-tracked application to a coveted pan-European Schengen visa while bad scores can limit travel, education, and internet speeds. “I think the best way to understand the system is as a sort of bastard love child of a loyalty scheme,” Rogier Creemers, a post-doctoral scholar specializing in Chinese law and governance at the Van Vollenhoven Institute at Leiden University.

Filed under: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Alinea, a Michelin 3-star restaurant in Chicago, now offers clear pumpkin pie and most of the Internet can’t handle it. Myself included.

And finally, the World Series continues between the Houston Astros and LA Dodgers. Great read by the WSJ as to how the good folks of Texas are less than amused with the oft-referenced NASA mission phrase and Twitter account @UghHouston is devoted to chronicling offending uses of “Houston, we have a problem,” and chastising guilty parties to do better.